Venetian blind assemblies that are assembled at a factory and shipped for installation at a job site are often damaged due to jolts or shocks received during shipping or during installation of the assembly in a building. Such damage can be very costly to repair particularly if the assembly is part of a hermetically sealed window unit. Damage to such units often can only be repaired at the factory where the unit was manufactured necessitating returning the unit to the factory, and where the blind assembly was damaged during installation, removing the complete sealed unit from the building, replacing it with a new unit, and returning the damaged unit to the factory.
Damage to the blind assembly may occur when the slats of the blind assembly are in a completely closed position, and because of a shock or jolt, the edges of some of the slats may become jammed or locked between glazings of the unit and insulation or retainer strips surrounding the edges of the glazing. This results in all or some of the slats being permanently locked into a closed or partially closed position.
Even if the units are shipped and installed with the slats in a fully open position, the slat tilting means associated with the unit may inadvertently be moved to a closed position thus putting the assembly in a state where it may be damaged.
It is therefore an object of my invention to provide for a locking clip that may be applied to an operable element of a slat tilting mechanism whereby the slats may be locked in a fully open position during shipping and installation.
It is a further object of the invention to provide for a locking clip that may be economically manufactured and discarded after a blind assembly has been installed at a building site.